Fresh from his dinner with John
Howard, Barnaby Joyce officially steps into the Senate for the first
time today to continue his battle for – among other things – his
Telstra future-proofing fund.

But is the fight between Joyce,
Mark Vaile, and Peter Costello over a Future Fund to subsidise
unprofitable bush services a futile waste of hot air? As veteran press
gallery watcher Rob Chalmers reports, the Nationals’ terms for agreeing
to the full sale of Telstra “are absurd and unworkable.”

Chalmers, in his latest Inside Canberra
bulletin, thinks this probably comes down to ignorance rather than some
deep and dastardly plot. He’s been talking to the doughty Clerk of the
Senate, Harry Evans, who reports that, unlike family and commercial
trusts, the Nationals’ trust can be knocked over by any future
government.

“Any parliament in the future could change or
abolish the trust and take out the money for something else. It would
be completely free to do that,” is the Evans advice. The Nats
apparently believe that no future government would take the political
risk of closing down the trust.

Really? Kim Beazley has already
warned that a Labor government would be raiding Peter Costello’s much
vaunted and much larger infrastructure Future Fund. And consider this
scenario: when Labor finds itself next in power – some time this
millennium – it’s possible the Greens could hold the balance of power
in the Senate.

What’s the chance of Labor and the Greens getting
together to spend the Nationals’ bush kitty on something closer to
their own electoral needs – urban environmental programs, for example?
Treasury, which is against the Nats’ trust fund, would more than likely
be pleased to advise a Labor government to close down the bush
communications trust and spend the booty as it likes.

Peter
Costello knows this, but is sticking to his silly argument that a trust
would somehow raise interest rates. Maybe he has his own plans for the
Nationals’ money, somewhere down the track.